Publication date : 20 September 2017
‘I came with my Burmese ID card’
Media: The Independent
Original URL : ‘I came with my Burmese ID card’
E-paper URL: ‘I came with my Burmese ID card’
“My ancestors were inhabitants of Burma (now Myanmar). They had been living at Shahab Bazar in Mungdaw for hundreds of years. My father and my grandfather were citizens of Burma. I have also been living in Burma for 80 years since my birth. But now they are forcibly evicting us, saying that we are Bengali immigrants to that country,” said octogenarian Rohingya refugee Hasina Khatun.
“We had to leave our ancestral land to save our lives after they set fire to our home. Suddenly, they started denying us our citizenship. But I still have my Myanmar National Identity Card from 1958,” said Hasina, who fled from Shahab Bazar area of Rakhine state on September 4 along with her two sons, two daughters-in-law and four grandsons.
The group had to walk around 30 km, sometimes hiding in bushes and hills, to finally enter Bangladesh on the evening of September 8 through the Kanjarpara border point in Teknaf.
“We could not bring anything with us, but I kept my national identity card with me as I feel I am a citizen of Burma. I want to breathe my last in my homeland,” Hasina said.
This correspondent talked with Hasina at 5.50 pm on September 8 after she and her family members crossed the Naf river to enter Bangladesh. They were covered in mud and were hungry and exhausted. Her grandsons—Mahfuz, 11, Faruk, 9, Anas, 6, and Sadek, 5—were shivering with cold and starving.
Rohingya Muslims have faced widespread discrimination in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. The Myanmarese government claims that Rohingyas are illegal emigrants from Bangladesh. However, Rohingyas have been living in Rakhine State in Myanmar for centuries.
The Myanmarese government has been denying Rohingyas as citizens of that country since 1982.
But in two “repatriation agreements” between Bangladesh and Myanmar in 1978 and 1992, the neighbouring country has acknowledged that Rohingyas are its legal citizens.
After fresh violence erupted in Rakhine state on August 25, over four lakh Rohingyas have crossed over Bangladesh, bringing along tales of mass murders, rapes and arson by Myanmarese security forces and Buddhist mobs. The exodus is still continuing.
